Attention Please

( Japanese serial " アテンションプリーズ ")

This cute little story of transformation of a tomboyish, overconfident, careless rock singer to a caring, mature flight professional is worth watching. The story is that of Misaki Youko (played by Ueto Aya), a girl who grew up with 4 brothers and a father. Naturally, she went on to become a tomboyish teenager, with no female friends. Being a cabin attendant is the most unsuitable job for her. But, just because a friend she has a crush on, says that he would like to see her in uniform, she applies for the post. During the interview, she manages to conceal her rock-star like appearance by borrowing a costume from the fellow interviewee and surprisingly, gets selected.
Here onwards starts the real drama - her continuous struggle to fit her unrefined self into the sophisticated surroundings; all this while dealing with a strict trainer Mikami Tamaki (Played by Maya Miki), not-so-supportive classmates and seniors. Everything she does is wrong, right from the speed of bowing to the tone of her speech. This obviously leads to frustration fueled further by her crush falling in love with some other girl. She almost gives up the wish to become a cabin attendant, now that the main motive is lost, but the trainer challenges her. Too proud to accept her failure, Misaki starts training again, just to defeat the trainer, though she is no more interested in the job. Her instinctive behaviour leads to some incidences which make her infamous. People start commenting that she is the one who is spoiling the whole class and how could someone like her get selected in the first place. But then, a moment comes. Just for fun, she wears a senior's uniform and then realizes the responsibility that comes with it. The immense satisfaction derived from helping an utterly confused Chinese traveller by communicating through sign/body language (due to language barrier), makes her start loving this job. In addition to this are the encouraging words from a newly acquired engineer friend, Nakahara Shouta (played by Nishikyodo Ryo).

Finally, as the exam nears, Misaki works really hard and performs pretty well. During the practicals, she maintains her smiling face though the examiner tries to pester her by her actions. Everyone agrees that she should pass, but the trainer declines. This is the most shocking incident for Misaki as this was the first time that she had done something so seriously and had still been a failure. This leads to the increase in her hatred for the trainer. But when finally, she realizes that the trainer knows her "inner beauty", more than anyone else and wanted her to become perfect, she softens, works hard again and finally passes the second test. During OJT (On the Job Training) again she does some classic mistakes, but when scolded by the senior Asou Kaoru (played by Fueki Yuko) and Captain Sakurada (played by Kohinata Fumiyo), tries correcting herself. In fact, later she manages to handle a critical situation, by her keen sense of observation and presence of mind. In her last OJT flight, she handles an unconscious passenger courageously despite being frightened in her mind.

On the final day of her training, both Misaki and the trainer are overwhelmed when Misaki admits that though she hated the trainer, it's because of her that she could attain this height. Also, the training section chief Dazai (played by Inoue Jun) admits that he pleaded with the interviewers for selecting Misaki, as he thought she can become a cabin attendant with a new charm.

"Never give up" attitude of Misaki, patience and strictness of Mikami trainer, section chief Dazai's faith in Misaki and the trainer, Captain Sakurada's well thought advices to Mikami trainer, Nakahara's never ending support to Misaki.... all these help Misaki grow into a professional cabin attendant who adds a special personal touch to the service she offers. We are simply surprised to see this transformation and how a seemingly unimportant job can be challenging as well as critical.

What if,

1. Dazai hadn't thought of selecting someone who is out of the box

2. Misaki had given up at one of the many frustrating moments

3. Mikami trainer had thought even once that Misaki is useless and gave up working on her (She had to put up with the comments from her colleague, students on why Misaki is not being kicked out by her and at the same time she had to listen to the hateful remarks from the hurt Misaki)

4. Sakurada captain hadn't assured Mikami trainer that she is doing her best.

Culmination of the efforts of so many people was a "a great new hire with special charm".

All these people lead by endearing Misaki and patient Mikami tell us, to believe in ourselves and to learn from those around us because, no job is easy and no individual is useless.....

अकिरा योशिझावा आणि कागदी दुनिया

आज सकाळी google doodle नं लक्ष वेधून घेतलं - कागदी google आणि फुलपाखरे... आणि मग कळलं की आज अकिरा योशिझावाची जयंती आणि पुण्यतिथी दोन्ही आहे म्हणून...

कोण होता हा अकिरा योशिझावा? पारंपारिक जपानी कला ओरिगामीला जगण्याचं साधन बनवण्याचे धाडस सर्वप्रथम केलं ते यानंच. ९४ वर्षांच्या आपल्या आयुष्यात तब्बल ५०,००० हून अधिक ओरिगामीच्या कलाकृती बनवणारा हा अवलिया. कंपनीत भूमिती शिकवण्यासाठी त्यानं ओरिगामीचा वापर सुरु केला आणि मग त्याच्या लहानपणापासून जोपासलेल्या छंदाला खत-पाणी मिळालं. या ध्यासापायी पुढं त्यानं कंपनीतली नोकरीदेखील सोडली. १९३७ साली हे नक्कीच खूप धाडसाचं होतं. साहजिकच सुमारे१५ वर्षं गरिबीत दारोदार भटकत घालवावी लागली. तरीदेखील निराश न होता १९५४ साली त्यानं Atarashi Origami Geijutsu (नवी ओरिगामी कला) या नावाचं पुस्तक लिहिलं. या पुस्तकातील घड्यांसाठीची notations आजही प्रमाण म्हणून वापरली जातात. याच वर्षी, म्हणजे त्याच्या वयाच्या ४३ व्या वर्षी, तोक्यो मध्ये International Origami Centre ची स्थापनाही त्यानं केली. पुस्तकामुळे त्याची आर्थिक परिस्थितीही सुधारू लागली होती. पण सच्चा कलाकार असलेल्या अकिराने आपल्या कलाकृती कधीही विकल्या नाहीत. त्या इतरांना भेट देण्यात किंवा प्रदर्शनासाठी देण्यातच त्याला आनंद मिळत असे.
ओरिगामीच्या थोड्याश्या ओबडधोबड कलाकृतींना अधिक गोलाई देऊन सुबक करण्यासाठी अकिराने "wet folding " या नवीन तंत्राचा वापर सुरु केला. कागद थोडासा ओलसर करण्याच्या या तंत्रानं ओरिगामी कलाकृतींमध्ये 3-d परिणामही अधिक उत्तमरीत्या साधला जाऊ लागला.
तर असा हा महान कलाकार आज "google doodle" च्या माध्यमातून आपल्या सर्वांच्या घराघरात पोचलाय.

Rat's Paw /पिपांत मेले ओल्या उंदीर

It was an afternoon, in August. We (me and deep) entered our office to be welcomed by a messed up drawer. There was someone, who was sharing not only our office space, but our food as well. And then, the hunt began…
The claws indicated that it was some kind of rodent. But then, we hadn’t kept the drawer open. Was there someone from “Ratatouille”, who was smart enough to open the heavy drawer? Surprisingly, it was true. Its way of entering the drawer by climbing from the lower section of the table and then pushing the drawer from inside was really astounding. But then, we bipedals don’t like to get defeated by some petty quadrupeds. And hence, we blocked its way by locking the table drawer. 

But this new roommate of ours was not to be deterred by these small oppositions. In fact, it lodged its protest by routinely dirtying our floor and the table tops with its paws.

It kept visiting our room, though he no longer had access to the delicious food items. We desperately wanted to have a glimpse of it, but what we found were just various evidences of its existence. And now, the story seems to have ended. Last Saturday, we caught a sight of it in the water tank. It may have fallen down in it while jumping from its edge and couldn’t come up. Hope, others from its clan don’t take up its incomplete job of fighting against us…. RIP "the uninvited guest"…

आज मराठी भाषा दिन ! आणि सकाळी सकाळी हे उंदराचे दर्शन. त्यामुळे, साहजिकच मर्ढेकरांच्या कवितेची आठवण झाली.

पिपांत मेले ओल्या उंदीर;
माना पडल्या, मुरगळल्याविण;

ओठांवरती ओठ मिळाले;
माना पडल्या, आसक्तीविण.

गरिब बिचारे बिळांत जगले,
पिपांत मेले उचकी देउन;

दिवस सांडला घाऱ्या डोळीं
गात्रलिंग अन् धुऊन घेउन.

जगायची पण सक्ती आहे;
मरायची पण सक्ती आहे.

उदासतेला जहरी डोळे
काचेचे पण;
मधाळ पोळे;

ओठांवरती जमले तेंही
बेकलाइटी, बेकलाइटी!
ओठांवरती ओठ लागले;

पिपांत उंदीर न्हाले! न्हाले!

- बाळ सीताराम मर्ढेकर

सर्व वाचकांना मराठी भाषा दिनाच्या हार्दिक शुभेच्छा !

Happy B’Day

Dear ----,

First of all, wish you many many happy returns of the day… We still remember the day, when you entered our lives. We couldn’t contain our excitement. We were waiting for you since so many days. Every now and then, we used to feel the need of someone like you. Your absence made us wander in this World Wide Web, in search of someone, who can lessen our web-trotting efforts. But , most of the times, it yielded no fruitful results. It isn’t the case that you are the only member from your clan to exist in this world. There are few like you, who had secured their virtual positions, even before your birth. But, none of them could match our expectations. We wanted someone who could provide exactly the things that someone like us would want; nothing less and nothing more. It’s well said “Look within, Don’t search for the things you want, in the external world. They are inside you.” So, we finally decided that we can’t wait for others to come forward. We have to take initiative and bring someone like you in the lives of many like us… That was exactly one year before….

Considering your age, you have achieved a lot. Though sometimes, we being only two, fail to give you the attention you deserve. In fact, today also, we almost forgot your birthday. In this first year of your life, you have given us immense pleasures… especially, the joy of creation. Within a week of your birth, you had earned the praises from a rock star in our field. Throughout the year, we received the words of appreciation about you from the young and old alike. Some even gave you a special mention on their homepages/blogs/walls. With the support of people like these, you grew up very fast and are about to complete the century of your contributions to this uncertain world.

Hope, you get better, day by day and enrich the lives of many like us, in the coming years…..

Once again, Many Many Happy Returns of the Day to our (me and Deep’s) dear blog “Certain News about Uncertain World”. You can see your gift on the right panel of this blog.... :)

Discoveries in a Day

Today was pretty eventful. Our usual discussions and surfing led to three discoveries (to be precise...Observations). None of them is that significant, but still we found them to be notable. It may happen that some of you are already well aware of these facts. But for us, it's nontrivial. Hence, the post...

1. Real life application of the fact that the sequence (n+k)/n goes to 1.

Most of you must have solved age problems in school. The problem statement would be something of this type....
"A man is 4 times as old as his son. In 3 years, the father will be 3 times as old as his son will be. How old is each of them now?"
Cynosure's post on the difference between the ages of siblings reminded Deep of a question that she had in mind as a school going kid.- "Why does it happen that as the time progresses, father who was 4 times his son's age became 3 times the same son's age". Translating this question into the language of Mathematics, with son's age as 'n' and father's age as 'n+k', yields a sequence (n+k)/n which is obviously decreasing and converges to 1 as n goes to infinity.

2. Sunrise and Sunset timings

It started as a discussion with MGK on the timings of getting up. We were whining about not feeling like getting up, as it's too dark around 6.30. Out of usual habit, we googled and got the latest time for sunrise as 7.15 am, which happens to be in the second week of January. Isn't it too late for The Sun to rise at 7.15 am??? No wonder then that we petty human beings don't feel like leaving our beds. This googling led to the second interesting observation of the day - "The shortest day doesn't correspond to the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset." Again resorting to the tools of real analysis, if we define the timing of sunrise on nth day by Rn and that of sunset by Sn, the shortest day would correspond to the smallest value of (Sn-Rn). But then inf (Sn-Rn)≠inf Sn + inf (-Rn) (To be precise, argmin (Sn-Rn)≠argmin (Sn) or argmin (-Rn) ). In fact, in this case it turns out that the “n” for which the corresponding extreme values are attained (argmin), are different for all the three quantities, Sn, Rn and Sn-Rn. So, we got a good application for somewhat non-intuitive real analysis result. For actual geographical reasoning, you may google and do explain us, if you get something.

Enough of real analysis stuff now…. Let’s get to real blogging

3. “blogspot.com” changed to “blogspot.in”

Richa noticed that the Feedjit has kind of restarted, as it was showing only latest 2-3 entries instead of its usual count of 50. But, when we went to Feedjit’s “real time view” for our joint blog, it seemed perfectly alright except the fact that in last 8 hours there was only one entry and it was from Indonesia. When we tried to visit the same link via blog, it turned up that it had almost 20 entries during last 5 hours, but all of them were from India. Then we noticed the change in the link from “.com” to “.in” and realized that all the blogspot.com links are getting redirected to blogspot.in links. Googling almost instinctively, we stumbled upon the page giving the details of this country specific redirecting. This helps Google to remove the content found objectionable by a specific country from a page visible in that country only. Of course, it won’t affect the harmless content posted by ordinary people like us. But still, if you want to see the original “.com” version, just type “-----.blogspot.com/ncr” to get the no country redirect version. Dear Feedjit users, don’t get disheartened if the panel on your regular blog shows only Indian visitors. If you want to see your visitors from abroad, go to “/ncr” link given above…..

That’s enough research for today… Off to some real research now…

- Akanksha & Deep

折り紙 - Origami

Haven't written anything since long... In fact there has been a drought of posts in 2012. But there is a reason behind it. Was busy with some creative stuff apart from writing. Here is the final output of the same seen through Deep's camera..... (Click the caption for enlarged view along with the names)

Origami City

It all started when our Japanese teacher told us about the exhibition "Reflections-2012" showcasing some aspects of Japanese lifestyle and culture to be held at Ranade Institute. We were supposed to present something related to Origami. First we started with the idea of airport, but finally landed on this city. Meanwhile, there was also a chart to be prepared related to origami stories. So, with so many things to do along with the regular work, couldn't take out time for blogging....

It was really an interesting experience... to see almost real-life like objects emerging out of a plane sheet of paper, without using anything other than the paper and our hands (Not even scissors, gum etc.). The word Origami literally means folding paper (Ori = To fold, Kami= Paper). So, our city consists of just twists and folds & no destructive acts like cutting.....

Showcasing this city and explaining the types of origami, telling the stories related to it to the visitors on the actual tenrankhai (exhibition) day was even more interesting. The most enjoyable experience was to tell these things to Japanese people in chyotto chyotto Nihongo (Little bit of Japanese) and listen to their excited responses in थोडा थोडा हिंदी / थोडी थोडी मराठी. In fact I even got a 5-yen coin, which is considered to be a lucky coin in Japan, from a Japanese girl.... So, in all it was a good republic day!!!

गोष्ट खासा-जीझोची - जपानी नववर्षाची

जपानच्या एका डोंगरावर एक आजी - आजोबा राहत होते.  खासा (वेताच्या टोप्या) विकून ते आपला उदरनिर्वाह करीत. नवीन वर्ष सुरु होण्याच्या आदल्या दिवशी घडलेली ही गोष्ट. आजी आजोबांना म्हणाली, "उद्या नवीन वर्ष सुरु होणार. केक बनवायला सामान आणायला हवं." आजोबा म्हणाले, "तू काळजी करू नकोस. मी बाजारात जाऊन  खासा  विकतो आणि मिळालेल्या पैशातून सामान घेऊन येतो."

पाच खासा घेऊन आजोबा बाजारात गेले. दिवसभर त्यांनी खूप प्रयत्न केला; पण त्या खासा कोणी घेतल्याच नाहीत. निराश होऊन आजोबा परतीच्या वाटेला लागले. थंडी वाढू लागली होती. हिमवृष्टीही सुरु झाली. अचानक आजोबांचा लक्ष एका जीझोकडे गेलं. गावाचं आणि विशेषतः लहान मुलांचं रक्षण करण्यासाठी असे जीझो  (पुतळे) असत. बघता बघता बर्फाने झाकले गेलेले सहा जीझो आजोबांना दिसले. आजोबांनी हात लावून पाहिलं. बिचारे जीझो चांगलेच गारठले होते. आजोबांना त्यांची दया आली. आपल्यासोबतच्या खासा काढून त्यांनी जीझोंना घालायला सुरुवात केली. पण त्यांच्याकडे पाचच खासा होत्या आणि जीझो तर सहा होते. इतक्यात आजोबांना काही तरी सुचलं. ते सहाव्या जीझोकडे गेले आणि आपल्या डोक्यावरची खासा काढून त्याला घालत म्हणाले, "ही काही तितकी नवी नाही, पण तरी थोडी थंडी तर नक्कीच कमी करेल ती." आणि समाधानाने आजोबा घरी परतले.
थंडीत कुडकुडणाऱ्या, बर्फानं माखलेल्या आजोबांना पाहून आजी म्हणाली, "अरे तुमची खासा कुठं गेली? ". आजोबांनी सारी गोष्ट आजीला सांगितली. केकचं सामान आणता आलं नाही म्हणून त्यांना वाईटही वाटत होतं. पण आजी त्यांना म्हणाली, "छानच केलंत तुम्ही. केक नाही केला तरी काही बिघडणार नाही." आणि दोघंही आनंदानं झोपी गेले.
रात्री अचानक मोठ्या आवाजानं आजी - आजोबा जागे झाले. कोणीतरी बर्फात चालत, गात येत असल्याचा आवाज येत होता.  आजी - आजोबा दोघे उठून बाहेर आले. जसजसं ते बाहेर येऊ लागले, तसे गाण्याचे बोल स्पष्टपणे ऐकू येऊ लागले.

"A kind old man walking in the snow
Gave all his hats to the stone Jizo.
So we bring him gifts with a yo-heave-ho!"

दार उघडून पाहतात तो काय, दारात सुंदरसा केक ठेवलेला होता आणि दूरवर ते खासा घातलेले सहा जीझो बर्फात आपल्या पाऊलखुणा ठेवत जात असलेले त्यांना दिसले.
मग काय मंडळी, कशी वाटली गोष्ट. एकूण काय तर जपान असो वा भारत वा आणखी कुठला देश ... सर्वांवर प्रेम करा आणि गरजूंना मदत  करा, असाच संदेश या साऱ्या लोककथा देतात.